On July 24, the day after his arrival at Washington, Halleck was sent to consult with McClellan and his generals.  The record of their consultations sufficiently shows the intricacy of the problem to be decided.  The question of the health of the climate in August weighed much with Halleck, but the most striking feature of their conversation was the fluctuation of McClellan’s own opinion upon each important point—­at one moment he even gave Halleck the impression that he wished under all the circumstances to withdraw and to join Pope.  When Halleck returned to Washington McClellan telegraphed in passionate anxiety to be left in the Peninsula and reinforced.  On the other hand, some of the officers of highest rank with him wrote strongly urging withdrawal.  This latter was the course on which Lincoln and Halleck decided.  In the circumstances it was certainly the simplest course to concentrate all available forces in an attack upon the enemy from the direction of Washington which would keep that capital covered all the while.  It was in any case no hasty and no indefensible decision, nor is there any justification for the frequent assertion that some malignant influence brought it about.  It is one of the steps taken by Lincoln which have been the most often lamented.  But if McClellan had had all he demanded to take Richmond and had made good his promise, what would Lee have done?  Lee’s own answer to a similar question later was, “We would swap queens”; that is, he would have taken Washington.  If so the Confederacy would not have fallen, but in all probability the North would have collapsed, and European Powers would at the least have recognised the Confederacy.

Lincoln indeed had acted as any prudent civilian Minister would then have acted.  But disaster followed, or rather there followed, with brief interruption, a succession of disasters which, after this long tale of hesitation, can be quickly told.  It would be easy to represent them as a judgment upon the Administration which had rejected the guidance of McClellan.  But in the true perspective of the war, the point which has now been reached marks the final election by the North of the policy by which it won the war.  McClellan, even if he had taken Richmond while Washington remained safe, would have concentrated the efforts of the North upon a line of advance which gave little promise of finally reducing the Confederacy.  It is evident to-day that the right course for the North was to keep the threatening of Richmond and the recurrent hammering at the Southern forces on that front duly related to that continual process by which the vitals of the Southern country were being eaten into from the west.  This policy, it has been seen, was present to Lincoln’s mind from an early day; the temptation to depart from it was now once for all rejected.  On the other hand, the three great Southern victories, the second battle of Bull Run, Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville, which followed within the next nine months, had no lasting influence.  Jefferson Davis might perhaps have done well if he had neglected all else and massed every man he could gather to pursue the advantage which these battles gave him.  He did not—­perhaps could not—­do this.  But he concentrated his greatest resource of all, the genius of Lee, upon a point at which the real danger did not lie.